SAP Lumira 1.31 for Beginners : (4/5) Create a Story

Create a Story is the fourth of the 5 part series – SAP Lumira for Beginners.

Dashboard is “an easy to read, often single page, real-time user interface, showing a graphical presentation of the current status (snapshot) and historical trends of an organization’s or computer applianceskey performance indicators to enable instantaneous and informed decisions to be made at a glance – Wikipedia

I would prefer to use Lumira to build simple dashboards. In case the requirement is to build a dynamic dashboards with a lot of features, I would use SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio. To get the maximum benefit we would need to code a bit apart from the drag-drop features. There is also exciting news about the merger of Design Studio and Lumira, please refer to SAP Lumira Roadmap Update.

Storyboard is a graphic organizer that provides the viewer with a high-level view of a project. This can help developers quickly get a sense of what work still needs to be completed and maintain transparency – WhatIs.com

Lumira is more suited for the business users to build infographics or storyboards in a fast and easy manner. In the Compose tab you would have the option to add New Page and Story. For more information on best practices for dashboarding, I would refer to blogs by Stephen Few : Visual Business Intelligence

1) Datasets : This includes the datasets that are currently in use. We can also switch between datasets and use their visualizations in one storyboard. Care needs to be taken while using filters in this case.

2) Story : This helps us to create new stories and switch between them.

3) Page : This helps us to create new pages and switch between them. We cannot duplicate or copy pages.

4) Visualizations : This opens a list of visualizations on the panel above that can be used by drag and drop.

5) Text : This option allows to place any text field in the story.

6) Pictures : Ability to add pictures from the web or import from the desktop is available.

7) Input Controls : This option provides a list of values from which filters can be applied by the users. The difference here is that the filter is visible on the page as a dropdown (City) or listbox (Manager).

8) Pictograms : Pictograms are available based on categories to use in the storyboard.

9) Shapes : Different shapes are available to use, especially while building an infographic.

10) Story Settings : Option to add global or local filters for a Story.

11) Page Settings : Settings for a particular page. Use continuous scrolling if you want to scroll down and view the storyboard eventually on iPad.

12) Visualization Properties : When you click on a visualization and scroll below, you can see a set of options to change the font, size, legends, axis and many other options based on the chart type. Use these to fine tune your story.

Tips : Use the Preview to check your final storyboard ; Delete on top is for the entire Story and not a Page ; You can view the Pages by clicking the small arrow on the right corner of the canvas.